


Tetrad

by foggynite



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 16:40:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30108924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foggynite/pseuds/foggynite
Summary: Life is different in a small town.





	Tetrad

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 5/25/05.

Life is different in a small town. People know more about your daily habits than you do. You can’t afford to offend people and not deal with the consequences for several months, if not years. It goes beyond you and them, beyond rumors and gossip. It’s their family, their friends, too. The entire town.

Issues are never, ever just about you.

Life can seem larger in a small town, if only because it’s under a magnifying glass. The problem is, for all the fine lines and cracks revealed, sometimes things get distorted. Sometimes things get warped and you lose perspective.

*

His wife decided they would move to Wilby. She thought living in a small town would be better for them. She thought that living in the city was pulling them apart.

Maybe he should have told her Wilby wouldn’t help. Maybe he should’ve kept lying, because the closer she got to him, the closer she got to the truth, and that was something he’d been running from long before he’d ever met her one day in a video store, reaching for the same movie.

She asked him if he liked Jackie Chan films, and that was when the lying started.

*

She named Emily after her grandmother, because the old woman had always kept her door open for an unhappy teenage girl. She had offered an understanding ear without judging, and in Wilby, that was rare.

The old woman had been dying of cancer, but John Fitzgerald had professed his undying love and there were two tickets to the mainland, and Grandma Em told her to follow her heart. So she did, and then there was Emily, and there was no John, and Grandma Em didn’t make it through the year.

But it’s her life, even though her heart sometimes aches.

*

Some days he wakes up and thinks that there’s a stranger in the bed beside him. She still looks like his wife, but she doesn’t really look at him anymore. She doesn’t laugh at his jokes like she used to, or smile and dance around the living room on Sunday mornings.

She’s been replaced by this person who has a strict timetable and their life jotted down in her date book. Sometimes it feels like everything he has to say is met with impatience. Frustration. Like she doesn’t have time for him anymore. So maybe–

Maybe he’s just stopped speaking.

*

He’s used to being angry all the time. Living in Wilby, he knows he’s different and if he didn’t, people would make sure he did. From his height to his grades, to not sleeping around. There’s bar fights, and drinking, and most people avoid him. Talk about him, snub him.

And they don’t know everything. He goes to the mainland, cruises the bars, has sex with random men in back alleys and bathrooms. So furtive, so challenging-- So ashamed. It’s wearing him down, making him feel old before his time.

It’s no way to live, but it’s all he has.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr


End file.
